Saudi Arabia has deployed 30,000 troops to its 800km border with Iraq following an alleged withdrawal of Iraqi border guards amid the ongoing battles against Sunni Islamist militants. Baghdad denied pulling off the guards.

Saudi state-owned news channel Al Arabiya released a video
apparently showing Iraqi soldiers saying the government ordered
them to retreat from their positions along borders with Syria in
the west and Saudi Arabia in the south despite no evident danger.

“We didn’t know why,” an officer says in the video,
which was obtained by Al Arabiya’s sister channel Al Hadath. The
report didn’t clarify whether the alleged withdrawal includes
Iraq’s borders with Jordan and Kuwait, both in the southern part
of the country, or Turkey in the north.

The authenticity of the video could not be immediately verified,
but the withdrawal report was denied by an Iraqi government
spokesman.

"This is false news aimed at affecting the morale of our
people and the morale of our heroic fighters," the
spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassim Atta, told reporters in
Baghdad. He added that the frontier was "fully in the
grip" of Iraqi border troops.

The Thursday deployment by Saudi King Abdullah is meant to
protect the Sunni Islamic state against potential “terrorist
threats” Saudi state news agency SPA commented.

Iraqi Shiite government is struggling to fend off the advancement
of Sunni fundamental Islamists, who want to create an Islamic
state on territories carved out of Iraq and Syria. Baghdad
received only limited military assistance from the US, as
Washington said it does not want to deploy ground troops in the
country it once occupied.

The idea of such a deployment was also objected by Saudi Arabia,
a fundamental Sunni monarchy and a long-time ally of the US.

So far the biggest military help Iraq has apparently received is
from Shiite Iran.